The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

[Zero]

The reconditioning sunds like GM at Marvel. Nice to see the big two have Britain's Big Two working at their old stuff.

[David Bird]

GM?

[David Bird]

Sunday Edition:

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

On recharge in the pub. A few notes:

* Between technical issues with the
hosting and the forum software
installer not wanting to play and
not comprehending the manual
install process, the whole future-
tracking community thing looks like
it's going to be beyond me for at
least a month.

* I'm watching a football match
between Real Betis and Sevilla. In
the stands, a Betis fan has torched
a Sevilla shirt and is videoing the
burning colours with a Nokia phone.
The TV cameras are videoing him
videoing it. Just thought I'd mention
that, don't know why.

* For those of you asking about
the photo quality of Box, go to
warrenelliscom and click the link in
the entry called "Box Lives". Not
a perfect test, but take a look if
you're interested. Box is a little
slow off the shutter.

* Started writing NEWUNIVERSAL
"properly" last night -- actual bits
of script as opposed to notes and
sketches. The stylistic choices for
this one are kind of subliminal --
with the reduced lettering sizes now
available, I'm attempting to fit in
more words per panel without
choking the artist out. The
equivalent, in writing terms, is those
very dense episodes of WEST WING
where you can clearly hear the
actors talking faster to fit Sorkin's
volume of words into the time limit.
Dunno how clunky it's going to look
yet, but right now I'm building it as
a slow dense read of a book. I'm
going to let the characters talk a lot
and move a lot of information
around. Basically, I'm getting paid
to experiment on something that
doesn't belong to me, which is kind
of interesting. If I break it, it's not
mine. Ha ha.

* Have fiddled around with website
design. May fiddle around with it
a little more before bed. Disabled
FeedWordPress for the moment.
Will mess around with that more in
the summer, see if we can't make it
do what we want it to...or just
develop a "shadow" page for the
site.

* Going to hunt for some new
music between pages tonight: if
I find anything good, I'll throw it
up on warrenelliscom.

* And if you haven't hit the Engine
this week, head in and look for a
thread in the Creators Conference
called, I think, "Pencils To Ink." The
Engine artists are showing how
they go from, big surprise, pencil
pages to finished inks. Last time
I looked, I saw Dave Gibbons and
Bryan O'Malley in there.

Here is the link to the camera stuff he's talking about:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/warrenellis/122281438/

And here a link to the art pages at the Signal. There is some interesting stuff, but I can't link directly to it. On the upper left side of the page you will see "Recent Threads." Click on "Pencil and ink - show and tell."

http://www.the-engine.net/forum/

And since this thread is on its second page, I thought it would be a good idea to give you the link to Bad Signal's subscription page:

http://www.flirble.org/mailman/listinfo/badsignal

This is Ellis' e-mail journal and you can subscribe yourself by following the simple instructions.

[Zero]

GM?

Lovely Grant Morrison

[DrTzinTzin]

If I said I didn't think Warren Ellis was that hot a writer...would I be pillioried?

[Lord Simian]

If I said I didn't think Warren Ellis was that hot a writer...would I be pillioried?

Not by the Lord of the Monkeys. Ellis hasn't been great since... hell, the Authority.

[nietoperz]

Not by the Lord of the Monkeys. Ellis hasn't been great since... hell, the Authority.

Not by me, either. He's...ok. That's about it.

[Zero]

He's either big ol' hit (Fell, Authority, Planetary, Transmet) or very very meh (X Man, Ocean, Down, Ultimate Galactus)

[David Bird]

Most love Fell and Planetary -- both ongoing titles.

[Zero]

Planetary's only ongoing for about six more issues though, maybe then I'll get my volume 4 tpb...

[David Bird]

Planetary's only ongoing for about six more issues though, maybe then I'll get my volume 4 tpb...

Unfortunately, for only two more issues and one of them is out tomorrow.

[Zero]

Oh Snap!

[daitong]

I love Ellis, but it's mostly for stuff that's already been written. But Planetary has been one of my favorite titles of all time.

[David Bird]

April 5:

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

Lost most of the last two days to
an allergy attack. Just what I
needed right now.

Among other things, I'm buried in
the script for the first issue of
NEWUNIVERSAL still. Which, like
MISTER SLEEPLESS, is becoming the
definition of "bitten off more than
can chew." Who thought it was a
good idea to tell five different
stories simultaneously in the same
book? Me, because I'm an arsehole.
I've lifted the "news ticker" tool
from LUTHER ARKWRIGHT to try
and keep it all straight. But clever
old me has five stories going in
five different timezones. So I'm
having to run two different time
stamps each time: local time and UTC.
Plus the whole thing's set in an
alternate Earth, so I had to start
the project by writing a potted
history of the world since 1960 in
order to set the whole thing up.
Which has to express out in the work.
The end result of which is saddling
the artist with details like "the
open volume of digest-sized manwha
on the floor of Izzy's room is
entitled YOUNG JUDGE BAO..."

Which maybe five people will get a
smile out of.

Multiply this by ten for the trouble
I'm having with MISTER SLEEPLESS,
which is at once less realistic and
thematically more complex.
NEWUNIVERSAL is all blending and
remixing of extant material, after
all. MISTER SLEEPLESS strikes
sparks off a lot of things, but is
essentially whole cloth.

And then there's this new thing for
Avatar, which is giving me fits.

The worst thing is, I have this
terrible itch to do an anthology
book, and I just don't have the hours
in the day. Something in STRANGE
DAYS mode, me and three or four
artists. But there simply isn't the
time this year. I almost considered
dry-running it in crippled 22-page
mode by grabbing up three or four
old Marvel properties and remixing
them under one of their old
anthology-title banners, like
UNKNOWN WORLDS (UNKNOWN
WORLDS --> NEW WORLDS?). But
it WOULD be a crippled version of
the full-immersion thing I have in
mind. And besides, most of Marvel's
old sf properties are pretty
horrendous things. Doesn't make
a lot of sense in the long view.

On top of all that, ha ha: due to all
the trouble through Dec/Jan, I'm
late on my own intent to commence
Apparat 2, the novella line. We kept
it off schedule, thankfully, so I'm
not LATElate -- but I wanted to be
started by now.

Just let me die.

[DrTzinTzin]

I wish I could find the piece he did as a police story riff from years ago. It's what inspired me to write.